Picasso: Peace and Freedom

The Project

Picasso: Peace and Freedom was a major exhibition bringing together 150 works by Picasso from across the world at Tate Liverpool. The exhibition revealed a fascinating new insight into the artist’s life as a tireless political activist and campaigner for peace, challenging the widely-held view of the artist as creative genius, playboy and compulsive extrovert. Displaying a vast collection of paintings, prints, sculptures, drawings and ceramics related to war and peace from 1944-1973, this was the first exhibition to examine in depth Picasso’s engagement in politics and with the Peace Movement. The exhibition also uses archive material to further explore Picasso’s work in the Cold War era, and how the artist transcended the ideological and aesthetic oppositions of East and West.

The exhibition was organised by Tate Liverpool in collaboration with the Albertina, Vienna where it was also exhibited. The exhibition also travelled to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, in Denmark.

Picasso: Peace and Freedom was curated by Professor Lynda Morris, AHRC Research Fellow and Curator, EASTinternational, Norwich University College of the Arts, and Dr. Christoph Grunenberg, Director, Tate Liverpool.